“That is the dangerous spot. Compression of the big blood-vessels there will cause almost instant unconsciousness. And then, you see, you’re done for-”
And at the momentary pressure of his thumbs the fire had swum in her eyes.
She turned with a start as something rattled the door-handle. Probably the passage-window was open and the wind blowing in. She was getting ridiculously nervous. The buckle was stiff to her fingers. (Is thy servant a dog that she should do this thing?) When she saw herself in the glass, she laughed. “An arum-lily quality that is in itself an invitation to violence.” Her own face, in the drowned evening light, surprised her-softened and startled and drained of colour, with eyes that looked unnaturally large under the heavy black brows, and lips a little parted. It was like the head of someone who had been guillotined; the dark band cut it off from the body like the stroke of the headsman’s steel.
She wondered whether her lover had seen it like that, through that hot unhappy year when she had tried to believe that there was happiness in surrender. Poor Philip-tormented by his own vanities, never loving her till he had killed her feeling for him, and yet perilously clutching her as he went down into the slough of death. It was not to Philip she had submitted, so much as to a theory of living. The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.
Could there ever be any alliance between the intellect and the flesh? It was this business of asking questions and analyzing everything that sterilized and stultified all one’s passions. Experience perhaps had a formula to get over this difficulty: one kept the bitter, tormenting brain on one side of the wall and the languorous sweet body on the other, and never let them meet. So that if you were made that way, you could argue about loyalties in an Oxford common-room and refresh yourself elsewhere with-say-Viennese singers, presenting an unruffled surface on both sides of yourself. Easy for a man, and possible even for a woman, if one avoided foolish accidents like being tried for murder. But to seek to force incompatibles into a compromise was madness; one should neither do it nor be a party to it. If Peter wanted to make the experiment, he must do it without Harriet’s connivance. Six centuries of possessive blood would not be dictated to by a bare forty-five years of over-sensitized intellect. Let the male animal take the female and be content; the busy brain could very well be “left talking” like the hero of Man and Superman. In a long monologue, of course; for the female animal could only listen without contributing. Otherwise one would get the sort of couple one had in Private Lives, who rolled on the floor and hammered one another when they weren’t making love, because they (obviously) had no conversational resources. A vista of crashing boredom, either way.
The door rattled again, as a reminder that even a little boredom might be welcome by way of change from alarms. On the mantelpiece, a solitary red pawn mocked all security… How quietly Annie had taken Peter’s warning. Did she take it seriously? Was she looking after herself? She had been her usual refined and self-contained self when she brought in the Common-room coffee that night-perhaps a little brighter-looking than usual. Of course, she had had her afternoon off with Beatie and Carola… Curious, thought Harriet, this desire to possess children and dictate their tastes, as though they were escaping fragments of one’s self, and not separate individuals. Even if the taste ran to motor-bikes… Annie was all right. How about Miss de Vine, traveling down from Town in happy ignorance?-With a start, Harriet saw that it was nearly a quarter to ten. The train must be in. Had the Warden remembered about warning Miss de Vine? She ought not to be left to sleep in the ground-floor room without being fore-armed. But the Warden never forgot anything.
Nevertheless, Harriet was uneasy. From her window she could not see whether any lights were on in the Library Wing. She unlocked the door and stepped out (yes-the passage-window was open; nobody but the wind had rattled the handle). A few dim figures were still moving at the far end of the quad as she passed along beside the tennis-court. In the Library Wing, all the ground-floor windows were dark except for the dim glow of the passage light. Miss Barton, at any rate, was not in her room; nor was Miss de Vine back yet. Or-yes, she must be; for the window-curtains were drawn in her sitting-room, though no light shone as yet behind them.
Harriet went into the building. The door of Miss Burrows’s set stood open, and the lobby was dark. Miss de Vine’s door was shut. She knocked, but there was no answer-and it suddenly struck her as odd that the curtains should be drawn and no light on. She opened the door and pressed down the wall switch in the lobby. Nothing happened. With a growing sense of disquiet, she went on to the sitting-room door and opened that. And then, as her fingers went out to the switch, the fierce clutch took her by the throat.
She had two advantages: she was partly prepared, and the assailant had not expected the dog-collar. She felt and heard the quick gasp in her face as the strong, cruel fingers fumbled on the stiff leather. As they shifted their hold, she had time to remember what she had been taught-to catch and jerk the wrists apart. But as her feet felt for the other’s feet, her high heels slipped on the parquet-and she was falling-they were falling together and she was undermost; they seemed to take years to fall; and all the time a stream of hoarse, filthy abuse was running into her ears. Then the world went black in fire and thunder.
Faces-swimming confusedly through crackling waves of pain-swelling and diminishing anxiously-then resolving themselves into one-Miss Hillyard’s face, enormous and close to her own. Then a voice, agonizingly loud, blaring unintelligibly like a fog-horn. Then, suddenly and quite clearly, like the lighted stage of a theatre, the room, with Miss de Vine, white as marble, on the couch and the Warden bending over her, and in between, on the floor, a white bowl filled with scarlet and the Dean kneeling beside it. Then the fog-horn boomed again, and she heard her own voice, incredibly far off and thin: “Tell Peter,”-Then nothing.
Somebody had a headache-a quite unbearably awful headache. The white bright room in the Infirmary would have been very pleasant, if it hadn’t been for the oppressive neighbourhood of the person with the headache, who was, moreover, groaning very disagreeably. It was an effort to pull one’s self together and find out what the tiresome person wanted. With an effort like that of a hippopotamus climbing out of a swamp, Harriet pulled herself together and discovered that the headache and the groans were her own, and that the Infirmarian had realized what she was about and was coming to lend a hand.
“What in the world-?” said Harriet.
“Ah!” said the Infirmarian, “that’s better. No-don’t try to sit up. You’ve had a nasty knock on the head, and the quieter you keep the better.”
“Oh, I see,” said Harriet. “I’ve got a beast of a headache.” A little thought located the worst part of the headache somewhere behind the right ear. She put up an exploratory hand and encountered a bandage. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’d all like to know,” said the Infirmarian.
“Well, I can’t remember a thing,” said Harriet.
“It doesn’t matter. Drink this.”
Like a book, thought Harriet. They always said, “Drink this.” The room wasn’t really so bright after all; the Venetian shutters were closed. It was her own eyes that were extraordinarily sensitive to light. Better shut them.